Renewable Revolution

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I admire his push to get off the planet as a technical achievement, but I share your opinion that it is not presently doable in any sustainable way. When everything goes to hell in a handbasket here, the Mars colonists will get no help from Earth and will perish, PERIOD.

It is quite difficult for me, utilizing the small amount of knowledge about Elon known to me, to consider it even remotely possible that he is  not aware of and has a plan to deal with this problem.
Bezos, Hawkings, Branson and others who view this is viable as well.

They are hardly likely to have a plan that makes them dependent on an entity they feel is doomed.

While extremely skeptical myself of the success of the endevour, this idea is even more improbable to me.

Time will tell. Musk would not be the first genius that bit off more than he could chew. If he can pull off the Mars thing, more power to him. I give him the benefit of the doubt but I am pessimistic about any hope for an off planet solution to mankind's fouling of the nest problem.

Quote from: agelbert on March 11, 2018, 08:05:34 pm

How do you propose to avoid the pitfalls of being the smartest guy in the room? How do you ensure the high IQ folks don't start believing the Darwinian bullshit that they are "better" than the grunts, unless the society you set up is 100% equal pay, equal privilege, equal opportunities and equal food and housing? Is your vision that of a horizontal power structure? If so, I support it.

I have always supported equal pay for equal work.

Look, it is simply ridiculous to say LD does not work as hard as Eddie or is not as Motivated as he is,  but LD gets paid about 10% what Eddie gets paid.  Why?  Because Eddie works in a gated profession that selects for "smart guys", and there aren't many Dentists because of that, but there are a s h i t load of truck drivers all competing for jobs.    Eddie benefits from being part of a Criminal Racket.  He won't ever acknowledge that of course, but it is the truth.

How do you prevent this sort of abuse from occuring?  First off, you get rid of the gate keeping.  Second, you keep the society small enough so everyone realizes that they depend on everyone else for survival.  Sanitation workers contribute more to your overall health than a doctor ever will, but they also are paid a fraction fo the salary that a "doctor" ( read that QUACK 🦆) is paid.  Traders on Wall Street contribute ZERO to the society, but get paid more than ANYBODY!  Does this make sense to you?  It doesn't to me.

RE

GREAT post! 

THe Wall Street insanity certainly DOESN'T make sense to me. It's a joke to anybody that has studied the stock market that we "need" brokers. You don't need a broker to buy a car or a house or whatever. The broker fee "requirement" is, and always was legalized highway robbery.

In regard to human health, Thom Hartmann recently came from a trip to Cuba (not a toursit trip, which is currently not allowed, but an official visit by some approved organization). He was gobsmaked by the perfect teeth he saw everywhere in Cuba, as opposed to the MANY Amercans he runs into in the USA with poor dentition and/or missing teeth due to the unaffordability of dental health care.

Health care should be paid by we-the-people for ALL aspects of human health. I certainly do agree that, regardless of how many years of study you put in, work should be your vocation, not some stepping stone to riches. That said, hard working people like Eddie should not have to buy their equipment (horrendously expensive drills. lazers, specialized chairs, etc) OR pay for office rent. The government SHOULD provide ALL of that and pay the professional a decent income with six weeks vacation a year, in addition to family leave for pregnancies and/or funerals plus child activities like field trips and other government funded mentoring activities to strengthen family ties.
 
But this country went the dog eat dog Darwinian route. That is why things are so messed up. Socialism with horizontal power distribution with 100% democracy and no hierarchichal pecking order of poobahs that prey on the rest of us is the answer. I do not see that happening any time soon.